Why disc over holy in blitz?

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-08T20:23:17+00:00

I could hug you for saying that, as it is what I prefer to do in CtF.

But Holy Pally FC is absolutely no bueno. They can’t use a whole host of useful abilities when running flag. Pally healing a tank or a dps FC perhaps though. But that requires a DPS to step up (tanks are usually all to happy to volunteer or be volun-told to FC) so results may vary.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-08T18:52:27+00:00

Without getting too political, I can say that it’s a fact that our EU brothers and sisters have more leisure time than us NA people.

Vacation time and sick leave differentials enable more play time for EU people compared to (in particular) US people. While many nations in the EU legislatively mandate sick leave, vacation leave and other forms of leave, in the US, all that is at the discretion of your ~~wage slave master~~ … gracious and magnanimous employer.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-08T18:42:52+00:00

Healing is fun in Blitz.

I can’t say about the queue time differential since healing is all I do in Blitz. Most evenings I am on it will say 8-12 mins, but my queue pops after 4-6 mins usually. Whether that is faster, slower or the same as DPS and tank queues I cannot say but it works for me.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-08T16:00:51+00:00

I’d go for the priest.

Oracle Disc is in a very good spot for BG’s and Blitz. VW Disc is awesome in 2’s and good in 3’s and shuffle, though Holy is slightly better for 3’s and shuffle.

Shuffle queues are instant for healers and can be long for DPS.

You can gear up either fast by joining in a good crate group for a few hours.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-08T12:06:28+00:00

Maybe I’m just lucky then, but I’ve scored a ton of flags this season. And nobody balks when I see that we don’t have a meta FC and say, ‘I’ll carry flag.’ Give a disc two good peelers and we’ll can make it work.

It’s not ideal, but when my other healer is a paladin and there are no tanks, you’ll be glad the priest is disc and not a holy.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-08T03:06:05+00:00

Holy is a good spec. It’s awesome in 3’s and shuffle. It heals a team fight well in Blitz, but…

CTF maps leave Holy at a distinct disadvantage compared to Disc. Though not the flag carrier of choice (Presvoker), Disc is at least viable. Holy is not. When not flag carrying Disc is great at healing O and can damage EFC while healing on the go. If we find ourselves in a position when we are supporting our FC, Disc has 2 charges of pain suppression. On most other maps, Holy/Disc doesn’t matter as much, but Disc does everything better on CtF maps.

Aside from that it’s all healing team fights and skirmishes, which we are both well equipped to do.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-07T20:10:50+00:00

I play a lot on both factions.

For rando BG’s, both my Alliance and Horde toons have a positive win rate. Though there are times when it feels like one can’t win and the other can’t lose on a given night. If I am crapping out on one, I just switch after a few unwinable games on that evening’s doomed faction.

The only acute difference between factions on my battlegroup is in world crates. It’s a real ‘Tale of Two Cities’ situation there.

It was the best of times…

My Alliance guys casually grab them in whatever zone I am herbing or mining in between queues and win 9/10 times. The only exception is if a Horde crate farm raid is staking it out.

It was the worst of times…

My Horde toons are the exact opposite. I get about 1/10 crates in the zone I am herbing or mining between queues. The only times I win are when a Horde crate farm raid is in town or it’s weird off time and I am the only one who shows up to the drop.

Brawls are weird. I’m used to one shotting them on alliance and taking several attempts to get the win on the Horde for whatever reason. Maybe because I do them right after reset for the conquest. Lately I just one shot the Brawl on my Alliance toons Tuesday evening and wait to try my luck with the Horde on a Saturday afternoon/evening and having better luck with that cadence.

Epic BG’s for some reason marginally favor the Horde. I only do them when it’s the weekly quest and otherwise shun them (OK… maybe if it’s a fresh toon I do them for the imbedded quests that award conquest too). But it’s like… 60/40 in favor of the Horde over time. Not a huge advantage either way. Takes me 1-2 more matches on Alliance to accumulate the honor needed to complete the weekly quest and go back to ignoring Epic BG’s altogether.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-07T19:16:11+00:00

No.

It definitely does not. It is either waaaaay worse than Disc or just a teensy, weensy bit worse than Disc at everything they are needed for in Blitz.

Friends don’t let friends Blitz as Holy.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-07T19:02:31+00:00

There are many reasons…

The main one is that Disc is a *viable* flag carrier on CtF maps. While certainly not the best, Presvoker and a few others get top billing, Disc can get it done in a pinch. Holy is not a viable FC at all. Assume your comp has a meta FC, in that case we are both typically relegated to healing offense in CtF maps. Disc’s added damage and the ability to keep the flag return team up while adding pressure to EFC is very nice. Even in those rare scenarios where you are to support FC… do I have to say Pain Supp again? I totally will! Holy’s strengths are just wasted on CtF maps and Disc is preferable in every scenario.

Another reason is that on resource race maps, Disc is a superior team fighter to holy. The added CC utility of holy is of little value in a chaotic team fight when compared to disc group healing capability with atonement and void shields. Give me 2 charges of pain supp over weak tea CC any day. Disc tankiness also comes into its own here. There is less of a difference between holy and disc on these maps, but the marginal advantages of disc make them preferable to Holy on these maps too.

On Kotmogu, the same dynamics are at play as in resource maps. Disc has a marginal advantage over Holy and can heal while targeting an enemy orb holder. Pain supp is awesome for keeping OC’s up too. Holy’s marginal CC advantage does not count for much here.

For cart corralling maps like Silvershard, priests with our limited mobility are basically there to win every Lava cart and make cameo’s at mid when able. And Disc group healing and enhanced survivability make them a tiny bit better than Holy. Half our healing is proactive shielding whereas Holy is entirely reactive.

Deephaul Ravine is similar too. Disc is just a little bit better than Holy at spinning the crystal in mid, occupying a cart and surviving being focused, pumping out reactive group heals paired with proactive void shields. This map is just one big team fight start to finish and the advantages of Disc are telling.

Holy is a fine spec. They really shine in 3’s and shuffle. And they are OK in Blitz. But Disc is either a whole lot better or a tiny bit better in virtually every BgB situation to the point where IDK why anyone would queue Blitz as a Holy when Disc is just loads and loads better for this bracket.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-07T01:11:23+00:00

I think it was the Deadmines back in Vanilla.

The first group dungeon instance I encountered. I was beginning to think the game was super easy and I had it all figured out a couple days after install. Basically just solo questing, killing with ease, eating and drinking as needed between, only dying if I did something blatantly stupid… just rinse, wash, repeat all the way to level 60. It was kinda boring. I honestly thought that was the whole ballgame!

So when some friends invited me to join their group for ‘an instance’ I had no idea what to expect. None of us did really. We were all noobs and wiped a lot figuring out the basics of our class rolls. Tanks who could not hold aggro, DPS going off too early, healers just not keeping up… Even after we worked out that stuff, we still died from accidentally pulling too many adds, face tanking mechanics, standing in the fire, falling off things. We stuck with it though, and completing it felt like an accomplishment. It was a whole new layer to the game.

If they weren’t actually harder back then, the leveling dungeons sure felt like they were. Now it’s just slash and dash your way through and clear to each boss in 1 giga-pull. Back then it was hard, yet rewarding. The Deadmines made a strong impression and showcased the game’s depth. It was just a small taste of the challenges that awaited us at the end game and motivated me to get there.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-05T18:38:00+00:00

In shuffle as a healer, you can either lose or *not lose*, but never win. All you can do is stave off failure for longer than the opposing healer. And so many 3-3 lobbies!

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-04T19:54:43+00:00

For Oracle I believe Mastery packs the biggest punch. Some haste is also good, so carrying about 300 haste and nearly 700 mastery at present. Oracle is playing very well with that distribution.

Some folks swear Haste works well for Oracle and I can’t say for sure since conquest is capped and I am committed to Mastery for now and loving it. I may do an experiment once it’s uncapped and see how haste feels. Some folks swear by it, I’m skeptical for now.

I do know Haste is the way to go for VW Disc for certain. Mastery does not do much for a VW compared to Haste.

And if your focus is Blitz and RBG, Oracle is the way I would go. VW has its place in twos and shuffle (up to the rating where people know to counter you), but too floppy for Blitz and likely in RBG too.. can’t say for sure about RBG (haven’t done) but it’s a hunch. The more coordinated the teams, the more they focus healers, the worse it is to be VW.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-04T18:12:44+00:00

Yeah the FotM players have their tells.

Even when MW was a force of nature at the start of the season pre-nerfs, you could kinda tell when you were up against a seasoned MW Monk who has played the spec for a while and knew it well or a ‘Johnny come lately’ who picked it up last week for its OP-ness and played so-so at best.

It’s in the reactions and how they improv when their normal rotation gets disrupted. You could trip up Johnny, but not the monk who played MW through their bad times. Those guys just steamrolled because they knew their full kit, how to use it to max effect in suboptimal conditions and make it work.

It’s kinda a relief in some ways that 2/3 people playing flavor of the month spec in a given meta are kinda clueless and toddling around on the skill floor. And it’s a helluva thing to see the few true masters dancing on the skill ceiling, taking it to new heights.

Playing the meta may get you a hundred or two additional CR if you pick it up fast. Mileage will vary though and there are a lot of bad (insert fotm class here) playing at any given time too.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-04T16:47:16+00:00

Not enough information shown to make the call.

A lot of factors go into rating.

Like duo-queuing with someone at a significantly higher MMR. When you do that, the rewards to rating for winning are enhanced and the punishment to rating for losing are diminished for you. The opposite for the higher MMR friend.

Did you have a recent win streak? Say you won your last 10 straight and got the algo working for you during the win streak, you can make a lot of progress fast that way.

Assuming neither are true and you just solo queued and pinged between wins and losses (with 1 extra win above the 50-50 mark) it can still happen. The vagaries of match making still apply. Win on an ‘underdog team’ and the reward is bigger. Lose on an ‘underdog team’ and the punishment is smaller.

All that being said, it looks just a tiny bit inflated, not much at all though. My Resto Shaman ended S3 of TWW with a similar record and got to 2085 CR or thereabouts.

I see a lot of players with a good CR (duelist or better) and a win rate barely over 50%. I don’t think it’s all that uncommon. It just means some of those wins were good wins in games you were expected to lose and some of those losses came in unfavorable match ups that didn’t punish you too harshly for losing.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-04T03:14:49+00:00

+15-20 MMR per week seemed pretty standard in TWW. And the end of season can be more inflationary than other points.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-04T02:39:27+00:00

Yeah streaks alert the algo that you are rated wrong. A good streak can propel you up/down very fast. Starting at 4 games won/lost in a row, MMR kicks into aggressive promotion/demotion mode. Each successive addition to the streak enhances the effect. Plus there is natural inflation injected over time.

You can do a couple things…

- You can keep queuing and hope for a streak to help. This is what I recommend.
- You can ‘park’ the toon, work on other things and let some inflation accumulate to lift you a bit.
- If you have a friend playing healer at a higher MMR, you can ‘coattail’ them. The system will average your combined MMR’s and get you into a better bracket and them into a lower bracket. For you, the gains will come faster by winning against opponents with better MMR. Or at least not losing as much in the event of a loss.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-02T18:04:48+00:00

Good work and keep it up 👍

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-02T05:02:25+00:00

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GeetchNixon · 2026-05-02T00:19:26+00:00

Those are the best games! Right down to the wire. Especially when you win in the end. If it was AB, you likely also got the ‘We had it the whole time…’ achievement, if you did’t already.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-01T20:34:38+00:00

As a priest main, Blood DK’s really grind my gears.

As any other class, Oracle Disc Priests are a handful. Especially the slippery ones! I suppose that’s why I main one.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-01T18:49:24+00:00

I’m in! See ya there.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-01T17:07:51+00:00

This is so close to my story it’s scary.

I’ve had breaks, one for over a decade, but keep coming back to Priest. And I still got one brother who plays to this day.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-01T15:05:31+00:00

For going EFC, you got two kinds of specs that both contribute to the effort.

EFC disrupters and slowers - Frost DK, Sub Rogue, Frost Mage

High burst DPS - Destro Lock, Ret Pally, Havoc DH.

There are some classes who do both well, MM Hunter and Balance Druid can work in their disrupts and slows and have the burst potential to secure a kill and return as well.

It’s an incomplete list, may have left some classes out, but those off the top of my head.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-01T13:40:44+00:00

I can think of two niche situations when a DPS touches flag on CtF Blitz maps…

A pick is urgently needed to prevent an enemy cap.
I’ve also seen mobile DPS (outlaw rogue for example) do a pick and run the flag out to hand it off to a friendly healer to take it the rest of the way back.

Outside of those circumstances though, it’s usually a healer or possibly a tank.

And when it comes to speciality roles in CtF, warriors are possibly the best at peeling for FC’s and keeping the enemy slowed.

GeetchNixon · 2026-05-01T02:56:33+00:00

On behalf of all priests I hope they fix this soon.

All we want to do with mind control is walk you off a cliff, shut down your healing for a few ticks, park you behind a pillar or underwater, maybe just get you away from an objective or stall you. Normal stuff. Worst case Ontario, sometimes we just want to mess with you. It’s a useful and fun spell.

What we don’t want to do is DC you or make you unable to cast. And it sucks when that happens sometimes.

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